Thursday, 12 March 2015

EVENT REPORT: Insurgent Q&A and Insurgent World Premiere

On March 10th I woke up and retrieved my phone from under a pile of stuff - kept there because I have been known to sleep-tweet - and checked my emails, just like I do every morning. And then I sat bolt upright because there, sitting in my inbox, was an invitation to a Q&A with Veronica Roth, Shailene Woodley and Theo James the very next day in London. I'd already been planning to go to London the next day anyway, so adding this into the schedule wasn't too much of a problem.

Except it made me have panic attacks all day, all night, and for the entire following morning. That sucked. But yay, Insurgent!

So, my step-dad and I made our way to Twitter HQ where the Q&A was being held. It's a very posh building. Very marble-y. Very shiny. Very nice. I really didn't want to leave, actually - I'd love to go again - because I couldn't stop staring at the design. If you look behind me, you can see lots of hashtags painted on the wall, including #waffles and #shipit; these people get me. There were a few sculptures dotted around, too, including a Dalek which you can see behind me, and some white glittery reindeer in the other corner.

As I was having my photo taken with the Twitter logo, Veronica Roth came out of the lift (that's an elevator, people from other countries) and walked past me. I stared at my step-dad in shock.

"Who's she? An actress?"

You can imagine my exasperated sigh. I then tweeted about it... from the actual Twitter offices. Because that's not weird at all.

As we followed her to reception, our names were ticked off the guest list and we made our way to a meeting room where we then took our seats. A few minutes later, Veronica walked in followed by Shailene and Theo, and the Q&A began.

It was a strange atmosphere. Everyone was excited, and there was a lot of laughing as Theo made jokes, but hardly anyone was looking at the stars. Most of us were looking at laptops or phones, hurriedly live-tweeting the event. I was doing that as well as blogging, vlogging, taking photos and - duh - listening. I'm not really sure how I pulled all of that off.

If you'd like to see my tweets from the event, which include questions and answers from the stars themselves, click here.

The Q&A lasted for half an hour, after which we whizzed over to Leicester Square for the world premiere of Insurgent. We were a bit early, so I decided to watch them set up. It was actually really interesting, and I saw Jim Chapman again. Here is the side of his head:

And here are other people setting up:

A little while later, everything started happening. I have to say, despite this being the world premiere, it wasn't as good as the Divergent one, even though that had just been the European premiere. It was like they'd blown all of their budget on the first one. It wasn't well organised, and the celebrity guests (other than Veronica, Shailene, Theo and Jim, the presenter) were Z-list.

It was still fun, though, and I'm so happy I was able to go. I mean...

Oh, hey, Theo. We were also given these:

At the Divergent premiere last year, the cast, the director and Veronica came on stage before the film to say a few words. I don't know about anyone else, but I assumed they went up to the balcony to watch the film with the rest of us. However, when the film finished, the stars never came out - except Ben Lloyd-Hughes who no one recognised, which was awkward - and so we had our suspicions that maybe they'd left straight away. Turns out that's exactly what they do, because this time, a few minutes after everyone had gone inside, I saw them come straight out again. So, that's a thing that happens. Fun fact for you all, there.

Sorry about the massive lighting rig, but you can see Theo James getting into the car, so that means it's a good photo, right?

According to their assistant, they were going straight to the airport from the premiere. They must be exhausted. So was I, when I got home - I could barely talk.

If you want to actually come around London with me, go inside Twitter HQ and watch bits of the premiere, you can watch my vlog below. Overall, it was a pretty good day, and for most people this will be a small thing that would never be considered an achievement, but I'm really proud of myself for going to both of these events despite how anxious I felt.

18 year old book blogger who aspires to work in journalism and/or publishing, and dreams of one day seeing her own work on bookshelves around the world. Amber has been running The Mile Long Bookshelf single-handedly since 2009.

UKYA Champion Teen Blogger 2015

Future8 Blogger Award 2014

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